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Episode 6: What Happened in 2024?
76 Plays3 months ago
Legislative recap of 2024's wins, losses, and draws, and what they mean for 2025. How did we do, how do we feel, why is the turtle on its back?
Still to come: ballot initiative recap of 2024.
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview of California Housing Legislation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to John nerds out on California housing legislation. It is January 7 2025 and I am back I realize I have not put out any shows for several months now. I apologize for that. A lot was happening with me personally and in other ways, and I'm going to leave it at that because I think the best way to get back on the horse is to do just that. So I'm going to get back to this podcast with a rundown of what happened in California housing legislation in 2024. The year is done and dusted. A lot of stuff happened other than California housing legislation, as we know, as we are being assailed daily.
00:00:45
Speaker
But I am going to use this episode six to look at what ended up passing, what shape was it when it passed, and certain things that did not pass and what that says about the state of housing legislation. Now, there was also a great deal in housing policy in California that people saw a lot more close up with the ballot initiatives.
00:01:11
Speaker
And I am going to leave that for a subsequent episode as it is very interesting what has been going on with rent control and the different personalities and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. But I think that deserves really its own episode. So stay tuned for that.
00:01:28
Speaker
So I am going to do what you might call all quick hits compared to previous episodes. I'm not going to go into any of the bills in great detail, but I'm going to let you know what happened with some that I mentioned in previous episodes and some that I didn't and try to come up with some kind of synthesis on what happened in the whole year as far as housing policy.
Key Passed Bills of 2024
00:01:52
Speaker
So the one that was the main topic of the previous episode, episode five,
00:01:58
Speaker
bungalow courts and the sinister stealth at that was Senate Bill 1123. And as a reminder, that was about making it possible to build ownership housing on most residential lots, including single-family lots, up to 10 units. And there were a lot of qualifiers to that. And ownership housing you know means every unit would be sold separately. What had happened in 2023, as I related in the last episode, was that It was supposed to apply to vacant single-family lots and any multifamily lots, and at the last minute in 2023, they took out the part allowing it on vacant single-family lots, and the fingerprints were kept off of that change.
00:02:45
Speaker
So 1123 was coming around for another pass trying to make it possible to achieve the goal of the original bill to allow ownership housing at greater density in single family areas, which are, of course, the vast majority of California residential areas.
00:03:03
Speaker
So 1123 did succeed. And I think that's because no one really wanted to step up in the process and say, you know, I don't think that we should build ownership housing in single family areas because everyone loves ownership housing. um Everyone sees it as part of people becoming homeowners, moving up the property ladder. That all has its own problematic aspects, that concept of ownership as being the be all and end all.
00:03:33
Speaker
But it is a useful tool at the moment to get bills passed. And of course, it is genuinely good to have ownership options considering that they are often thin on the ground these days for other reasons. So that did make it through. It got passed. It got signed ah in the form of Senate Bill 1123. It did make some more tidying up of what it meant by vacant single family lots in 2023.
00:04:02
Speaker
When they said vacant, they didn't actually define it. And it wasn't clear if it was going to mean vacant as in there's an empty home on it or vacant as in there is no home Well, they said, in the final version of 1123, they defined it very clearly. They said, for purposes of this paragraph, vacant means having no permanent structure unless the permanent structure is abandoned and uninhabitable. No permanent structure seems a little blanket to me, and I am a little concerned if a building, if a lot has, say, only a garage on it. Well, it says abandoned and uninhabitable.
00:04:41
Speaker
A garage is uninhabitable, but it's not necessarily abandoned. Does it meet this legal requirement? I don't know. So we'll see how this works, but it is a step forward because previously you could only build this kind of new housing model in multifamily areas, and now you can build it in a lot of single family lots, if not all through the area.
00:05:02
Speaker
They did make some other changes and mostly it was, I think, cleaning up from the version that passed in 684. So previously you had a very narrow hoop to jump through where it had to be at least the maximum density allowed in the local zoning.
00:05:19
Speaker
And then there was also a maximum. So it had to be within the range of this minimum and maximum. And in some cases they would be the same. So you could only build it at a very specific density. In this cleanup bill, they amended the maximum local residential density to 66% of the maximum residential density. So basically they lowered the minimum density.
00:05:44
Speaker
that these projects could be, which I think is good because it means that some some of these lots, you know, it might be easier to build four than to build six. And so this makes it possible to build four and still take advantage of the rest of the bill.
00:05:58
Speaker
One other thing it changed just to give an example of the things they whittled around the edge of is that previously they listed a lot of things that a city could not ah require. For example, they could not require a setback between the units except as required by building code. So one of the things they added was essentially that a local agency may impose its existing height limit in the existing zoning designation.
00:06:28
Speaker
Previously, because that wasn't mentioned, there was some other language that could have been read to say, you can go past the height limit if you need to get to your specific density. Well, they changed that. Now the height limit is just flat. The local height limit, the locality has the right to assess its existing height limit, and that's a new hard cap.
00:06:50
Speaker
So I'm sure there were some discussions going on about what kinds of buildings people actually wanted in these single family areas. Most of the rest of the changes were fairly minor, although it remains a rather complex bill. There are a lot of different things to look at to determine if a project meets the requirements here. And finally, all the amendments do not become operative until July 1st, 2025.
00:07:16
Speaker
So we are not going to see any of these projects yet. We have to wait another six months to actually have this be legal. Another bill that was big on the agenda in 2024 was Senate Bill 937. I will talk about that briefly because I've already mentioned it. It was basically saying that if a city was going to charge impact fees or affordable housing fees, infrastructure fees, et cetera, et cetera, it could only be charged once the housing received its certificate of occupancy.
00:07:48
Speaker
Because not only does that mean that you can get the project started with less money, it also means that you don't have to borrow all that money for and pay all the interest on it for some time. And it generally has a multiplicative effect on how much how much housing is feasible. This did pass. I mentioned in previous episodes that It appeared to have some language which gave exceptions, such as if there was already a plan to be building the infrastructure that the fee was funding, then the city could assess it up front.
00:08:24
Speaker
And it seemed like the legislation was adding in language that it had already struck that technically already existed. And I was concerned that it was going to end up legislating the same state of affairs as before with the same exceptions that had existed in law before. I have been told that it has been carefully worded so that it really should in most cases be generating the delay in fees that it is supposed to. Honestly, it is kind of convoluted language, and I don't know that I could confirm personally that it can. So we'll have to see. ah The sponsors in California, YIMBY, seem fairly happy that it passed. And I hope hope that it did work out. And I hope that it does have the effect that it was supposed to.
00:09:18
Speaker
Another bill, AB 2580, introduced by Buffy Wicks, did succeed. It was about historical designation. It had been prompted by the fact that a little known state commission had come in and started designating an area in, I believe, San Mateo County.
00:09:38
Speaker
historical when this clearly had NIMBY intentions. Because historical zones often result in prevention of new housing. It's dubious whether entire neighborhoods should be considered historical as opposed to individual buildings. I think it's once again freezing everything in amber. And it would have created some limitations on exactly how an area would get zoned historical. And it did pass, but it got amended significantly over time, and it basically became a transparency bill. It required more reporting about historical zones, what was historically protected, and what, if anything, is being developed in areas with historical protections. So that's an example of things being watered down, but it may in the end still have some positive effect.
00:10:33
Speaker
Another bill that I talked about, I believe in the last episode, but I just want to confirm that it did pass. And it did seem to pass in decent shape was the builder's remedy reform. This was Assembly Bill 1893.
00:10:49
Speaker
uh, also by assembly member Wix. And the builder's remedy, if you recall, is when a city is out of compliance with its housing element. Current law is that any developer can propose essentially any housing at any density, as long as it is 20% affordable. It had not been used for many years. It was just starting to be used again. And there was a concern that it could be improved. 1893 was a complex stab at improving it, and it ended up being an extremely long bill, ah but it is supposed to give more certainty for builder's remedy projects. Especially interestingly, and I mentioned this last episode, it does and continues in its final form to change the exact levels of affordability that are required. Previously, it was 20%.
00:11:47
Speaker
They changed it to 13 percent for low income households or 10 percent for very low income households or 7 percent for extremely low income households. And all of these have a numerical definition. Extremely low really is extremely low. And then finally, for housing development projects of 10 or fewer units,
00:12:13
Speaker
as long as they are on a site of less than one acre and are at least 10 units per acre, then they do not have an affordability requirement at all anymore. So under this, you would be able to build duplexes, five plexes, up to 10 plexes in a city that is not compliant with its housing element and rent or sell them all at market rate. And this makes sense because these are small developments usually by smaller developers and they have never historically been very amenable to having deed restricted low income units with them.
00:12:51
Speaker
They are the kind of project where you want to have a lot of different developers doing them, hopefully turning them into a template that you can just build and build and build, and they make sense to do as a market rate.
00:13:06
Speaker
So this past, it is very complicated. It may have intersected with what's happening in San Francisco so that for a while San Francisco may actually in practice allow four plexus or even 10 plexus on most single family lots in the city.
00:13:23
Speaker
ah That's according to lawyer Chris Elmendorf, who's probably one of the few people who understands everything about this bill. There was some behind-the-scenes consternation about whether it was hurting existing Builders Remedy projects. It seems to have been worked out to something people people on the pro-housing side that everyone can grudgingly live with. So that got passed, and once again, we have to see what actually ah happens there.
00:13:50
Speaker
I will briefly mention SB 1211 by Senator Nancy Skinner, who has now stepped down after hitting her term limit. This is about multifamily ADUs, accessory dwelling units. So what that means is building extra homes in and around multifamily housing or apartment buildings.
00:14:12
Speaker
So we already have laws about using interior space of an apartment building, so that could be a parking garage or other internal common area that and turning that into units so the people are there instead of cars.
00:14:30
Speaker
so Under 1211, that's not changing, but previously, multifamily units were able to build up to two detached accessory dwelling units, so separate units outside the apartment building, you know in the back or whatever, if they had a big lawn. Previously, they could build two new detached ADUs on their outside space. Now, they can build up to eight.
00:15:00
Speaker
Now they can't build more than the existing number of units. So if you have a four plex, you can build another four units. If you have an eight plex, you can build another eight units. If you have a hundred units, you can build another eight units.
00:15:14
Speaker
Also, it allows them to build on outdoor parking space, which I believe was um not quite as clear before. ah they add They tidied up the language there. And they specified that cities are more limited in what kinds of objective development or design standards they can impose on these ADUs on the same lots as multifamily buildings.
00:15:40
Speaker
This is a way for people to take an apartment, develop it up so that it has more units in it, and good for them. Now, this is one that's going to get a little spicy.
Vetoed and Failed Bills of 2024
00:15:51
Speaker
This is AB 3068 by Matt Haney of San Francisco, and this was actually a pro-housing bill that ended up being opposed by the pro-housing organizations because of the changes that were made to it as it went through the system.
00:16:10
Speaker
And it goes back to something I talked about in previous episodes, which is the fight within labor on what are the appropriate labor standards to impose and what labor standards are too much. So previously we talked about how there had been upzoning legislation that allowed for housing as long as it had, quote, skilled and trained workforce.
00:16:33
Speaker
which basically meant you had to have workforce up to standards that meant it would only be union labor that could possibly meet the standard. And it was a fairly small proportion of labor in the state. And a number of unions, led by but not limited to the carpenters, argued that this was too limiting, that it was preventing projects from happening at all,
00:16:56
Speaker
and that labor should not be requiring legislation to do its job for it. And they suggested and got legislation that instead had prevailing wage, which is to say higher wages, but again, not requiring union labor, requiring some level of training opportunities for apprentices getting up in the trades.
00:17:18
Speaker
and health insurance. And there was something of a knockdown drag out fight between several unions with the carpenters again in the forefront and the traditional building trades council, which continued to argue for skilled and trained. In the end, when it was being fought out a couple of years ago,
00:17:40
Speaker
It certainly felt like the carpenters and the housing organizations that ah fought with them had won because ah legislation that allowed prevailing wage, not skilled and trained in most cases, passed.
00:17:58
Speaker
and was allowed to pass by the very influential Building Trades Council. However, 3068 shows that the building trades do not feel they have conceded or lost this fight because it was meant to be about adaptive reuse, taking office buildings and converting them into residential or mixed use.
00:18:19
Speaker
This is something that a lot of people want to do, especially in San Francisco. It doesn't always work physically. It has to do with the width of the building. You know, the wider a building is, the harder it is to convert to residential. But there are a number of cases where you can do it, especially with older office buildings. And so everyone likes this idea.
00:18:39
Speaker
as the bill progressed, it started getting more requirements added, like requirements for income restricted, deed restricted, low income units, like how much could be very low, how much could be extremely low, how much could be moderate income, and so forth. And then near the end,
00:18:58
Speaker
At some point, at some committee, it got amended to add a requirement for skilled and trained workforce. If I read it correctly, it was for anything that was involving 40 or more homes and a building of more than four stories in height.
00:19:15
Speaker
So I believe there were some other changes that were sort of some some people say, you know, adding to the Christmas tree, or some people are now saying everything bagel toppings involving requiring the building to be up to current code as opposed to, you know, usually older buildings are allowed to be up to older code with some exceptions for urgent health and safety matters. But the long and the short of it is that an action alert went out by many of the groups that had originally supported this legislation asking that it be opposed.
00:19:50
Speaker
It did end up passing the legislature and then following the same call, Governor Newsom vetoed it. So there are certainly still some disputes over how much labor requirements are going to be imposed on legislation, on ah legislation allowing more housing. Essentially, the question is not closed. So adaptive reuse, it is still possible to do adaptive reuse, but it is not streamlined in the way that was sought by Haney's bill.
00:20:19
Speaker
I will quickly mention Senate Bill 450. This was a cleanup to the duplex bill, and it was started in 2023. It did not pass in 2023, but the session continued and the bill ended up passing in 2024, the same bill. This was basically acknowledging that when the state of California said we should allow duplexes on every lot in single family zones, we should end single family zoning, even if only moving out up to two family zoning.
00:20:49
Speaker
that that legislation has not resulted in many duplexes being built or two homes on one lot or whatever, and that it needed some cleanup to be more productive. So one example of what Senate Bill 450 did was it said that you cannot have objective standards for development for the duplexes that use this bill you cannot have different objective standards than for a single family unit on the same lot. So for example, there were cities where in the single family zone, their, their own zoning said you could build a 35 foot single family home, you know, three stories, three stories in the sloped roof. And then they put in a quote, SB nine legislation, SB nine design standards that said, if you want to duplex on the same lot, you can basically only build two stories.
00:21:40
Speaker
to simplify. So that was very disappointing. And so it was good that SB 450 came in to so say, you can't do that kind of shenanigans. If you allow a certain envelope for a single family home, you need to allow that envelope for a duplex. There were a number of other cleanup things. However, one big obstacle that remains in the text of SB 9 which is probably not going to be taken away for at least another ah year or two, is the owner occupancy requirement. So that is that under SB9, you can only build a duplex if you are in fact the owner of the property and you live there. Now, there's no such requirement for ADUs, and in ADUs, we've had a boom. I think it makes sense that people should be able to you know buy a home, turn it into a duplex while never having lived there.
00:22:33
Speaker
and then pass it on, rent it out or sell it to two new families. And boom, you've got that. You've got people who are learning to do this, who are building up the skills, who are going to do it more and more as they make it their living. An owner occupancy requirement, I think, just is a way to limit is a way to limit the scope and a way to say it's only going to be worthy people as opposed to these, you know, quote, developers that are going to tear up the neighborhood or something.
00:23:03
Speaker
It's ah not a great decision to require owner occupancy, and we have just finished dismantling owner occupancy requirements for ADUs in general. But it was part of the deal that passed the Senate Bill 9, the original duplex law, so it's probably not going to be repealed anytime soon. It wasn't in the cards this session because a lot of the people who made that deal back in, I think it was 2022, are still around and they see themselves as bound by.
00:23:32
Speaker
But there was some progress made, and hopefully more will be made. One I haven't mentioned, but that I think is going to be ah some direction of where we need to go in the future, is Assembly Bill 2934.
00:23:51
Speaker
Assembly Bill 2934 was by Assemblymember Chris Ward. And it gets at one of the non-zoning barriers to more housing. And that is the International Residential Code or IRC versus the International Building Code or IBC. These are the building codes that are supposed to be how we make sure that our buildings are safe and sound and are not going to fall down or catch fire. We call them international. They're not international. They are the US. That's like the World Series. We're playing with ourselves.
00:24:24
Speaker
There are two sets of codes. One is for basically single-family homes and duplexes. That's IRC, International Residential Code.
00:24:35
Speaker
Everything else, whether it's triplexes, tenplexes, commercial buildings, huge apartment buildings, stadiums, I don't know, hospitals, maybe not hospitals, is the International Building Code or IBC. And when you go from IRC to IBC, you suddenly need a lot more protections, including sprinklers, including a lot more fireproofing. And it's always been suspect that we have this divergence that we say we don't need fireproofing for single family homes, but we do for triplexes. And there has been some research recently on social media where people have found people saying in like 1907 or something that they wanted to restrict multifamily housing because they didn't think they could do it in the zoning at the time. They didn't have zoning. They wanted to restrict multifamily housing
00:25:30
Speaker
by making the fire protections as rigorous as humanly possible on that side and as non rigorous as humanly possible on the single family side. So you actually have that the codes are different enough that different kinds of contractors do one kind of code versus another. And you would think really that if you wanted a certain level of safety for a duplex, you would want the same level of safety for a triplex.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I think California does, by the way, now require sprinklers and new single family homes, although that's pretty new. But the bottom line is IBC is probably much more overbuilt, especially for smaller apartment buildings.
00:26:12
Speaker
It's not just single stair, although single stair is one of the things that you need you know two staircases ah for even small apartment buildings. But there's the question of, could the IRC make more sense for three to 10 unit buildings? So that is what brings us to 2934. That basically said, why don't we?
00:26:34
Speaker
apply IRC to three to 10 unit buildings. It was going to be basically setting the housing department and the Building Standards Commission and other stakeholders, the task of studying the question, coming up with recommendations, and setting a target of reducing construction costs.
00:26:55
Speaker
ah by certain amounts with the expectation that this could be done probably by allowing, in whole or in part, IRC for smaller buildings. But this bill did not make it through. ah This was one of the bills that was held in ah held on suspense. It was passed unanimously in the assembly where it originated. But when it got to Senate appropriations, it was held. That is how a bill dies when either someone important wants it dead or it doesn't have enough support to get the Senate Appropriations Chair to push it forward or indeed both. So it's a way the bills die and no one says who killed them. And it was killed that way. So that was unfortunate. But there may be there is almost certainly more to come there.
Future Legislative Prospects and Political Changes
00:27:43
Speaker
I will also note some other bills that failed ah usually by being held in committee in the same way.
00:27:50
Speaker
ah There were some that were against institutional buyers. So, you know, ah big corporations trying to buy up rental housing. There were three bills that did different kinds of restrictions, like prevent them from buying if they already owned like 1,000 single family rental properties. I'm going to focus on just one of the three, and that is Senate Bill 1212.
00:28:16
Speaker
That is by Nancy Skinner and that is one of the reasons that I find it worth going into because it's someone I respect so much ah who is one of the great pro-housing champions, but it shows some of the divergence in opinion when it comes to ah you know corporate interests in housing. So it essentially said that it would make it illegal for real estate investment trusts essentially to purchase single family homes or duplexes.
00:28:44
Speaker
And personally, I think that maybe we don't want ah real big, big companies purchasing ah more and more homes. I know if we got to a certain point, then we would have more oligopoly and there would be, you know, they would be taking more of the surplus. They would be able to charge more and not have as much competition. But you have to ask, why is it a problem for a big corporation to buy a single-family home or a duplex, and it's not a problem for it to buy an apartment building. These kinds of bills seem to me to have a sort of religious attachment to the single-family home as the American dream, and if single-family homes are corporate-owned, that's a problem. if apartment If apartments are owned by big corporations, well, that's just how apartments work, and you can't expect to have protections there.
00:29:35
Speaker
More to the point, I actively do not believe that these kinds of corporate purchases are the root cause of the housing crisis. I and many like me believe that they are symptomatic, that because we are not building housing, the housing that exists has a much greater return on investment.
00:29:56
Speaker
As such, some big corporations are scooping up housing. they They still do not own a very large share at all of the housing in the country or even in California or even in big markets. Yes, they might own hundreds or thousands, but that is out of millions. The vast majority of even rental properties are owned by small owners that own one or two properties.
00:30:21
Speaker
And it doesn't seem like what's called recent buying binges. It seems like it has not changed that big companies still own a pretty, pretty small percentage of our housing stock. So it seems to me that this is creating a villain. You know, they're not great companies, but neither are regular small landlords.
00:30:42
Speaker
And it seems to me that it's treating a symptom more than a cause. It's giving people this idea that they are going to alleviate the housing price ah crisis by stronger things along these lines, by preventing any corporation of any size from owning a single family home. And then every single family home has to be where you could only live in a single family home if you own it. And the thing is, some cities in Europe have tried that. It did not really help. um It changed the structure of the market, but it did not make housing more affordable and it made things worse for renters. So I think this is a wrong path. I don't personally put my energy into it. But there are people I greatly respect, like Nancy Skinner, who have ah worked on it.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I do accept that if we got to a very a high point of concentration of ownership of housing where we are not right now, then we would also be in big trouble. I will also note that some of the big companies that ah do this kind of acquisition specifically say when they disclose risks to their shareholders that This is something they are doing because there is low supply. They are targeting places like California that build less than average. And they specifically say to their shareholders because they legally have to. If places where we are buying start building a lot more housing, then your investment in our company will be less valuable.
00:32:11
Speaker
So treat the root cause, which is the lack of supply. And these ah big companies will find it less interesting, less profitable to do this kind of investment in the first place. There is another bill SB 1201, which was beneficial owner disclosure.
00:32:33
Speaker
which I think is another important part of not not so much addressing housing supply. It is often the same people who are going on about ah big corporations. But I think it is a good policy to make sure that when someone owns a rental home that they as a person are identifiable.
00:32:56
Speaker
Because right now, the way corporate registration works in the US, it's very possible to own a home and rent it out anonymously. you know You run it through a Delaware corporation or something, and then you know if you look it up on the county tax roll, you just find, you know this is the corporation that owns it. And then you try to find the corporation that owns it, you go to Delaware, your trail runs cold.
00:33:22
Speaker
And sometimes this causes real issues when you have an owner that is neglecting a property and it is actually not possible for the jurisdiction to find anyone to find. So ah there have been stabs over the years at making a a disclosure of saying who ultimately is the person who is benefiting from the corporate chain that is owning this ah that is owning this home.
00:33:47
Speaker
And that is something that keeps failing, unfortunately. 1201 by Durazo. It passed the Senate and then it made pretty much no progress in the assembly. It didn't get passed its first ah committee hearing. One interesting thing I've heard is that a big force that really wants to make sure it's possible to own a home anonymously is married men thinking about divorce or married men who have been divorced and are actively hiding assets, which is interesting. I don't know how well those are represented in the legislature, but it might be significant. Who knows how many lobbyists also are hiding assets on the side as part of their own portfolio.
00:34:32
Speaker
So all in all, a lot of bills were passed. Obviously a lot of bills failed. The bills that passed accomplished a fair amount, but they were not huge bills. They were not along the lines of 423.
00:34:46
Speaker
which allowed for more building of affordable housing for cities that were not meeting their obligations. They were not along the lines of SB 50 that would have upzoned the whole state, essentially, and allowed um much wider areas within every city ah to have apartments built on them. And I think that there is some chafing in the pro-housing community that we are doing these smaller feeling bills. Now, 2024 wasn't necessarily the best year for ah transformational legislation. Everyone was working on being reelected and there was a lot else happening out in the world.
00:35:30
Speaker
It can be tricky to navigate big bills through. I don't think that the new legislature elected in November is much less pro-housing. There were some victories. There were some defeats. I think they're overall a little more pro-housing or at worst unchanged. So 2025, we could see some more ambitious things coming up. A lot of this can be hard to tell.
00:35:59
Speaker
But there does seem to be at least a little appetite in the wake of Trump's victory to be more aggressive, recognizing that the lack of housing in California is driving people out of the state.
00:36:12
Speaker
is driving people to places like Texas because the economic opportunity might not be as good, the income might not be as good, but people want to own homes and they can do that there. and ah That is feeding ah California losing congressional representation as our population stagnates.
00:36:34
Speaker
And it is creating a perception that Democrats do not build livable cities, that Democrats are not the pocketbook party. And obviously that is not really something that the Republicans hang hung their hats on, but it is a perception that, possibly to some extent, colored the election. It is something that ah people may better see the need to do something about.
00:36:58
Speaker
If it were easier to buy a home in California, then ah Democrats might be better perceived, regardless of what the messaging on either side was. so We will see what happens this year, and I will try to keep you updated on it.
00:37:15
Speaker
Before I move on to this year's legislative session, I will, of course, in the next episode, talk about the Rent Control Initiative and the initiative that would have further bound the Rent Control Supporting Organization.
00:37:32
Speaker
It was very much a battle of the initiative sponsors in housing this year before the California voters.
Impact of Social Media Changes on Legislative Access
00:37:40
Speaker
Another thing I want to reflect on is that when I started this podcast, I was thinking I would have all this juicy gossip about what was going on. And I would say that has been partially the case, but it was not as comprehensively the case.
00:37:56
Speaker
as I was imagining, and that's basically because of the downfall of Twitter, that Twitter had all this juicy gossip, you know because a lot of legislative people were on it. There was a lot of stuff about what you know what what is Portentino thinking and so and and so forth.
00:38:13
Speaker
And there was less of that in 2024 because I went completely off Twitter now X. Even if I were still on it, it is no longer nearly as usable.
00:38:27
Speaker
It's alternative is blue sky, which is good, but does not have as big a housing community on it yet. So that's ah one reason I haven't had as much material to work with, but there's still a lot happening and I'm still glad I'm doing this podcast. So thank you very much for listening. I also plan to bring on more interview guests. See you with the next ballot initiative episode. And until then, keep on warning.